


sensory deprivation

by respoftw



Series: 2019 Hurt/Comfort Bingo [6]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Captivity, M/M, Pre-Slash, Recovery, Sensory Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 14:21:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20565794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/respoftw/pseuds/respoftw
Summary: They took his sight first.





	sensory deprivation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dayzor (tarot_card)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarot_card/gifts).

> No, I am not dead. Nor have I abandoned writing! Life has been pretty demanding lately so I return to this series with what is complete and utter id fic. I make no bones about it, this ticks a lot of boxes for me and I have no regrets.
> 
> Dayzor, I hope you like it. Sorry for my id hijacking your prompt!

Rodney was in hell.

Soundless, sightless, senseless, hell. The room that they - whoever _they_ were - had thrown him in when he first arrived here was everything he had been taught to fear. It was damp and dank and dark. He could hear things crawling in the darkness, feel the skittering of those same things as they scurried across his bare skin, see the dim shadows of them as they moved. It was torture 101 and Rodney wasn’t prepared for it - wasn’t ready for it. 

God, he wished he was still in that room.

They took his sight first. A padded blindfold that locked behind his head, the edges adhering so closely to his skin that not a single sliver of light would penetrate. 

It wasn’t like the comic books, his other senses didn’t start working better. They - the ubiquitous they - still managed to surprise him. They moved so quietly that they may as well have been ghosts. One minute Rodney was sure he was alone and then there would be the crack of a knuckle in his ear, his only signal that the pain was about to begin. He knew they weren't ghosts. Ghosts wouldn't hit so hard. Rodney would curl himself up into a ball and scream through the pain. The screaming seemed to help.

They took his hearing next; globs of _something_ pushed into his inner ear where it hardened, expanding to fill the space and leave him with nothing but the sound of his rushing blood in his ears. The first time he managed to force a crack into whatever the substance was with his fingers, a hood was placed over his entire head.

Rodney had watched enough of a certain type of porn to imagine what the hood looked like. It fit snugly over the blindfold, covering his entire face, leaving only two slits for his nostrils and a space for his mouth uncovered. It wrapped around the back of his head with thick buckles securing it in place. The weight of the padlock keeping those buckles closed made him sob.

He couldn’t hear them when they came anymore but he could still scream the pain out.

They took that away next, a thick gag that forced its way into his mouth, just falling short of triggering his gag reflex. The gag was attached to the hood and Rodney might have been able to remove it if they didn’t tape his hands into fists at the same time.

The beatings hurt so much more when he couldn’t scream.

They stopped removing the gag to feed him after a while. Instead, Rodney felt a pinch in his arm one moment and woke up to the feeling of a tube snaking into his skin the next. 

The day they stopped beating him was the worst yet. Rodney hated the pain, hated the feeling of hands on him, the horrible way they came and went without warning. But - god - it was nothing compared to the complete absence of any sort of contact at all.

One day after a particularly painful beating - it might have been a few days in, it might have been a few months, his ability to discern the passage of time was broken beyond fixing - Rodney awoke to nothing.

He was dimly aware of the pinch of the IV in his vein, the deeper pinch of a catheter in his penis, but that was all he could feel and even those sensations crept away as the nothingness of it all well and truly surrounded him. 

Rodney couldn’t move without monumental effort. The effort didn’t seem worth it because there was nothing to see, nowhere to go. He was alone. For the first time since the ordeal had begun, he truly started to believe that his team had abandoned him. That _John_ had abandoned him.

Sometimes he heard John’s voice. Sometimes he even saw him but the John that he saw kept dying, kept screaming, kept breaking something deep down in Rodney’s chest and Rodney knew he was going mad. He was breaking. They - he still had no idea who they were, hadn’t ever seen their faces - were winning.

That seemed important for a while. Then...it didn’t seem as important anymore. Nothing did.

Rodney was content to float. It didn’t seem like hell anymore. It didn’t seem like anything.

* * *

The feel of hands on his skin again was too much. Rodney instinctively flinched away from the feeling, surprised to realise he could move again. The hands returned and, god, they were like sandpaper scraping against his skin after so long without sensation. He felt a tugging at the back of his head and then there was air on his face and, oh god, he could hear again and - - Rodney was pretty sure the loud keening that he was hearing was him but he couldn’t stop. It was too loud, everything was too loud and - -a bright light pierced through his suddenly open eyes like an icepick. Rodney could almost feel the icepick needle its way into his brain, a streak of white pain causing him to keen louder which made his head hurt worse which made him - - the almost familiar pinch of a needle took him back into nothing and Rodney didn’t have enough sense to feel anything but grateful.

* * *

“....laddie, wake up.”

“...while you…..lazy oaf we are….please, Rodney….”

“...blue jello today…...miss it….stole you some…”

“...harvest...be gone for...back in a few....better…”

“Damnit, McKay, if you don’t wake up right the fuck now I’m gonna shoot you.”

Rodney waved a hand for the voice to shut up and let him sleep.

“Rodney?”

He knew that voice; didn’t he?

“Sh’prd?” he asked, his throat raw and rusty.

“Yeah, buddy, it’s me. We’ve got you, ok? You’re safe. I promise you’re - - shit, no, don’t open your eyes, don’t - - “

Rodney blinked, the light exploding in white balls in front of his eyes, leaving circles of red and white floating across his mind. He blinked again, the circles clearing to reveal something else, someone else.

Had John always been bathed in white light like that or was this something new? 

“You came for me,” Rodney said.

John’s answering smile was the most beautiful thing in the world.

“Promised I always would, didn’t I?”

Rodney winced as a loud beeping started assaulting his senses. He screwed his eyes shut against everything and heard John curse quietly, felt John move to silence whatever was causing the noise.

“Too much, huh?”

Rodney nodded, his consciousness already slipping away from him.

“That’s ok. Just, know that I’ll be here when you wake up, ok?” 

That sounded pretty good.

Rodney slipped back into nothing again but this time the nothing came with the promise of something after. 

**Author's Note:**

> Next: Kidnapping


End file.
